Mukhyamantri Abua Swasthya Suraksha Yojana (Abua Swasthya Bima Yojana)

What is Mukhyamantri Abua Swasthya Suraksha Yojana?

Mukhyamantri Abua Swasthya Suraksha Yojana is Jharkhand's state health assurance scheme, run by the Department of Health, Medical Education and Family Welfare through the Jharkhand State Arogya Society (JSAS). The scheme, announced by the Chief Minister in 2024 and widely searched as Abua Swasthya Bima Yojana or the Abua Swasthya card, gives an eligible family cashless hospital treatment of up to Rs 15 lakh per year on a family floater basis.

The word abua means "our own" in Santhali and Mundari, and the naming is deliberate: the scheme is designed as Jharkhand's own extension of the national health assurance architecture. Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY covers Rs 5 lakh a year for households identified on the central list. Mukhyamantri Abua Swasthya Suraksha Yojana raises that cover to Rs 15 lakh and, more importantly, takes in the large group of Jharkhand ration card families who never appeared on the central SECC-derived list at all.

Coverage on the ground

• Around 66 lakh families and roughly 2.79 crore individuals in Jharkhand are enrolled across the combined PM-JAY and Abua Swasthya beneficiary base.
• The scheme covers about 2,322 health benefit packages across 26 medical specialties, including cardiology, oncology, neurosurgery, orthopaedics, nephrology and neonatal care.
• Pre-existing conditions are covered from day one. There is no waiting period and no exclusion for a disease diagnosed before enrolment.
• There is no cap on family size and no age limit for members.

How is the Rs 15 lakh funded?

Mukhyamantri Abua Swasthya Suraksha Yojana runs on a hybrid model, and knowing the layers helps when a claim is queried:

• Up to Rs 1 lakh per family per year: insurance mode, underwritten by the National Insurance Company (NIC).
• Above Rs 1 lakh and up to Rs 5 lakh, trust mode, paid by the Jharkhand State Arogya Society.
• Above Rs 5 lakh and up to Rs 15 lakh: trust mode, again paid by the Jharkhand State Arogya Society.

For the patient the layers are invisible. The hospital raises a pre-authorisation against the beneficiary's card, treats the patient cashless, and settles with the insurer or the society afterwards. A beneficiary should never be asked to bridge the gap between two funding layers.

Who is eligible for the Abua Swasthya card?

Your family is covered if:

• You hold a Jharkhand PDS ration card of the red, pink, yellow or green category.
• Your rural household meets one of the six deprivation criteria of the Socio-Economic and Caste Census 2011.
• Your urban household falls in one of the eleven notified occupational categories used by PM-JAY, such as domestic workers, street vendors, construction workers, rag pickers, sanitation workers and transport workers.
• You are already an Ayushman Bharat PM-JAY beneficiary in Jharkhand, the state cover sits on top, taking you from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 15 lakh.

Your family is not eligible if:

• You do not hold a qualifying Jharkhand ration card and do not appear in the SECC or occupational category lists. Families holding a white or non-PDS card outside these lists cannot apply.
• You are not a resident of Jharkhand. The scheme is a state scheme; PM-JAY portability is a separate national arrangement.
• The treatment you want is at a hospital that is not empanelled, or is a procedure outside the notified package list. In that case the family is eligible but the specific claim is not.

Eligibility here is not something an applicant argues for on a form. It is drawn from existing government databases — the PDS ration card database and the SECC 2011 list, so the practical task for a family is card generation, not application.

What documents are required?

How to apply for and get the Abua Swasthya card

1. Collect your ration card and the Aadhaar cards of every family member you want on the card.
2. Go to the nearest enrolment point, an Ayushman kendra inside any empanelled government or private hospital, a Common Service Centre or Pragya Kendra, or a Vasudha Kendra.
3. Ask the operator to run an eligibility search using your ration card number or the Aadhaar number of the family head. The system pulls up the family record from the ration card and SECC databases.
4. Complete Aadhaar authentication for each member, by fingerprint or by the OTP sent to the Aadhaar-linked mobile number.
5. Collect the printed Abua Swasthya card / Ayushman card for each member. Card generation is free, so do not pay for it.
6. Keep the card and the ration card together, because a hospital admission desk will normally ask for both.

Members born or married into the family later can be added at the same kiosks by repeating steps 3 to 5 for the new member alone.

How to use the card at a hospital

1. Go to any empanelled hospital and find the Ayushman Mitra or Arogya Mitra desk near the reception.
2. Present the Abua Swasthya card and Aadhaar of the patient. The desk verifies identity biometrically.
3. The treating doctor selects the applicable treatment package and the hospital raises a pre-authorisation request to the insurer or the Jharkhand State Arogya Society.
4. Once pre-authorisation is approved, treatment proceeds cashless. The family pays nothing for the covered package, including bed charges, surgery, medicines, diagnostics and follow-up as defined in the package.

The full list of empanelled hospitals is published on the state health assurance portal at bis.jharkhand.gov.in. Checking that a hospital is empanelled before admission is the single most useful precaution a family can take, because a non-empanelled hospital cannot convert a private bill into a scheme claim afterwards.

Common problems and how to fix them

• Name not found in the database, usually a ration card that has not been digitised or an Aadhaar mismatch. Get the ration card record corrected at the block supply office, then return to the kiosk.
• Aadhaar authentication failing for an elderly member whose fingerprints do not read. Ask the operator to use the OTP or iris route instead.
• Hospital demanding payment for a covered package. Escalate to the Ayushman Mitra desk on the spot, and then to the state helpline. Cashless treatment for a covered package is not discretionary for an empanelled hospital.
• Pre-authorisation rejected because the procedure sits outside the package list. Ask the hospital for the written rejection reason; some cases are re-raised successfully under a correct package code.
• New family member missing from the card. New members must be added at a kiosk; they are not added automatically when the ration card is updated.

Help and grievance redressal

• State health helpline: 104
• Ayushman Mitra desk at any empanelled hospital, the first point of contact for anything happening during an admission
• Jharkhand State Arogya Society, Ranchi, the trust that settles claims above Rs 1 lakh
• District civil surgeon's office, for complaints against a specific empanelled hospital in the district
• bis.jharkhand.gov.in, the state health assurance portal, for the hospital list and scheme notifications

Card generation under Mukhyamantri Abua Swasthya Suraksha Yojana is free at every authorised kiosk. No agent can charge a family for issuing an Abua Swasthya card, and no empanelled hospital can charge a beneficiary for a covered package.

How to check your application status

Mukhyamantri Abua Swasthya Suraksha Yojana does not run on a submit-and-wait application model, so "status" here means one of three different things depending on where a family is in the process. Check the one that matches your situation.

1. Checking whether your family already has a card

• Visit any Ayushman kendra, Common Service Centre or Vasudha Kendra and ask the operator to run a search on your ration card number or the Aadhaar number of the family head. The operator can tell you on the spot whether your family record already carries an active Abua Swasthya or Ayushman card, or whether no card has been generated yet.
• If a card exists but you have lost the physical copy, the same kiosk can reprint it from the database. There is no separate "reissue application" to file.

2. Checking a card enrolment that is stuck

• If you completed Aadhaar authentication at a kiosk but the card was not printed the same day, go back to the same kiosk with your acknowledgment or the mobile number used at enrolment. Card generation is meant to be instant, so a multi-day delay usually means the authentication did not complete or the ration card record has not synced with the SECC database, and the operator needs to re-run it.
• For a dispute the kiosk cannot resolve, call the state health helpline on 104 with your ration card number ready.

3. Checking a hospital claim or pre-authorisation once you are admitted

• Once you are admitted under the scheme, the treating hospital's Ayushman Mitra desk is the direct source of claim status: whether pre-authorisation is pending, approved or has been queried by the insurer or the Jharkhand State Arogya Society.
• Ask the desk for the pre-authorisation or claim reference number at the time of admission. Quoting this number, rather than only your name, gets a faster answer from the desk or from the helpline.
• For claims above Rs 1 lakh that move into trust mode with the Jharkhand State Arogya Society, the hospital's billing or insurance desk remains the point of contact; the family does not need to approach the Society directly during the admission.
• If a hospital is unresponsive about a pending claim, escalate to the district civil surgeon's office or call 104, quoting the hospital name, admission date and the pre-authorisation reference number.

There is no independent applicant-facing portal login for tracking status by ration card or Aadhaar number online; status checks under this scheme are handled through the kiosk network, the hospital's Ayushman Mitra desk, and the state helpline rather than a self-service web dashboard.